Chapter 16

The large room seemed very, very small and very, very close.

At least, it did to Susannah. Hannah had served the meal and retreated into the kitchen area, as if fully aware of the vibrating tensions in the room. The table where they ate was at the side of the large living area.

Wes, as Susannah had expected, declined to come to dinner. She had not told him they had a guest, much less who it was. Her brother had been in a morose, belligerent mood since Erin’s visit, and Susannah did not particularly want his glowering presence at the table.

There was nothing special to eat tonight: just a plate of stew from the huge caldron that also fed the hands, along with freshly baked bread and newly churned butter. To Rhys, it was a banquet after Libby Prison and the weeks in the saddle, although he had indulged himself in an expensive meal in Austin. He wondered whether it was Susannah’s company that added spice to this meal.

Her violet eyes were sparkling with devilment, as if she knew she had lured him here against his will. She was beguiling when she had that look in her eyes, when the little lines of worry were eased. Beguiling and enchanting. And so very, very touchable.

It was all he could do to keep his hands on the utensils, eating slowly to occupy his mind with something other than deep, teasing eyes and soft skin and the faint scent of flowers. And even though the food was good, it was all he could do to eat when another part of his anatomy was so bloody damned hungry.

To ease some of the tension, he reintroduced a subject calculated to cool himself off. “You never did say how your brother was?” It was a question.

Susannah hesitated, a frown burrowing between her eyes, and Rhys knew something was wrong. He suspected she was torn between loyalty to her brother and the need to talk about what was happening to him. Rhys already knew. He’d seen it before, the slow dissolution due to drink. Wes had a better reason than most, but that didn’t help Susannah.

“What is it?” he coaxed.

“Yesterday, Wes saw the girl he was going to marry before the war.”

“And she decided she didn’t want him anymore,” Rhys guessed. With two exceptions, one sitting across from him, he’d never had much faith in women.

Susannah shook her head. “You haven’t met Erin. No, she wants him as much as ever.”

Rhys began to understand. The damned bloody fool. Rhys had always believed in taking what was offered. The only reason he was hesitating even a little now about taking Susannah again was for his own sake. He didn’t want to get involved any more than he already was. He didn’t want to be responsible for anyone.

He certainly didn’t want any responsibility for damned stiff-necked Wes Carr. Yet Susannah was looking at him with a kind of pleading hope in her eyes that tore at his insides.

“And he doesn’t want her?” he asked, deliberately misunderstanding.

Susannah looked at him through suddenly narrowed eyes, as if she suspected he was playing games again. “Of course, he does. They’ve always been in love.” She consciously ignored his amused look, the look that denied the existence of love.

“What’s the problem, then?”

“His leg, of course,” she said impatiently, only too aware that he understood far more than he was indicating.

“If he would get over that damned self-pity,” Rhys said, suddenly annoyed with himself for giving even the slightest damn, “he could do anything he wanted. I knew someone in England, a retired soldier who’d lost a leg. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do.” It was a lie. He didn’t know anyone like that at all, but Susannah’s eyes had misted in a way that always did weakening things to him.

“How?”

Rhys hurriedly improvised. “He had this special leg built. He didn’t even need crutches.”

Susannah’s eyes cleared, and her lower lip trembled in a way that made him want to nibble it. “Do you think we can find someone to make one?”

Bloody hell. What had he gotten himself into? Still, it couldn’t be too difficult. His mind started working on the possibilities. Just as he had a talent for picking up dialects and languages, he also had knack for improvising when necessary, a talent of particular value in Africa.

“Perhaps,” he said cautiously, wishing he hadn’t brought up the subject of Carr after all—until he saw the smile on her face, the look that said he, Rhys Redding—scoundrel, thief, bastard—could do anything.

If only she knew.

He turned back to his food, but it had suddenly turned to sawdust. He had somehow committed himself again, and to a bloody damned fool he didn’t even like.

Susannah saw him do as he did so many times, almost will a distance between them, and she searched frantically for another subject. “The Martins are trying to take land from other families, too.”

He looked up, but this time he didn’t meet her eyes. He had found that to be too dangerous. “Oh?”

“Half the families in this county,” she said. “They buy up the bank notes, and then something happens—fields trampled, livestock disappearing, hands killed—so they can’t be paid back.”

No! He knew what she was trying to do. Draw him into a lake of quicksand. He didn’t care about anyone else. He sure as hell didn’t care about people who had apparently turned their backs on Susannah because of her brother. He tried chewing again, but the food was worse than sawdust. Bitter now.

“So many of the leaders, those with influence were killed during the war,” she said. “More than two-thirds of the men in this county went to war, and many of their companies were nearly wiped out. There’s no one left to fight the land-grabbers.”

“Why was your … husband so far east?”

“His was one of the companies sent to Shiloh. He caught the attention of a general who used him as a scout, and he just got passed along as most of the fighting moved east.”

“And Wes?”

“That’s the ironic part. He didn’t want to fight his friends and neighbors, so he went east to volunteer. They might well have faced each other, Mark and Wes. I think that’s one of the things that’s bothering Wes. All of us grew up together. Mark and Wes were really close, almost like brothers. Mark was the only one other than Erin who stood up for Wes when he decided to fight for the North, the only one who defended my father who argued against secession. We owed him a lot.”

That’s why she’d married him. He suddenly realized that. She hadn’t said she loved her husband the other afternoon, only that he had been her best friend. And now … she said she’d owed him. Not loved. Owed. Now it made sense, that innocence he never quite understood. He remembered something else she’d said. It’s not what Mark would have wanted, she’d replied when he asked why she didn’t sell out.

She was every bit as bloody noble and honorable as her brother. Hell-bent stubborn in both qualities. He’d given her credit for more sense, especially after the way she had lied their way through Confederate lines. But although this facet of her character rather distressed him, the newly discovered understanding of her marriage, for some reason, did not.

But she seemed oblivious to his thoughts. She was back to making a point he didn’t want to hear. “The sheriff isn’t doing anything. Erin says everyone thinks the Martins are paying him off. There’s talk of vigilantes, but there’s no one strong enough to pull people together.”

Rhys didn’t like the way she was looking at him. He didn’t like it at all. He yawned as if in boredom. “They’ll find someone,” he said, dismissing her implication, “if they care enough.” Rhys hesitated a moment, then added carelessly, “Maybe your brother …”

“He fought for the Yanks. No one will listen to him now.”

“Then that’s their loss,” he said. “Why should you worry?”

Susannah bit her lip. “They’re my neighbors.”

“Don’t sound much like neighbors to me,” he retorted.

“Rhys …?”

“No,” he said flatly.

She gave him that searching look that always made him feel she saw things that weren’t there.

“In any event,” he said, “why should they listen to me? I’m British, and … little but a foppish adventurer.”

“Not always.” She grinned impishly. “Although you can do foppish well.”

He wished he had never used that bloody Texas accent. “They would never listen to a stranger.”

“I wonder,” she pondered out loud. “There’s something about you …”

“That makes people detest me,” he finished, remembering Wes’s attitude.

“How long are you going to stay?” Susannah asked, suddenly changing tactics.

“Depends on how old the bunkhouse gets.”

“You can move in here anytime you want.”

His eyes opened in pretended horror. “And have everyone talk?”

“Not with Wes here.”

“Ah, our other problem.”

“He’ll come around.”

“I doubt it.” Not until hell grew as bloody cold as a Welsh January, and he wasn’t planning on staying that long.

He pushed the plate aside and stood, stretching as he did so. It had been a very long day in the saddle. It had been a long day, period. Too much time to think. Thinking, he’d decided long ago, was hazardous to one’s well-being. Much better to stick to instinct, and his instinct told him to run like hell.

Still, he wished she didn’t look so damned wistful and soft. And she wasn’t that soft, he reminded himself. She had traveled as well as any man, had run this ranch alone for years. Don’t forget that.

And she wants something now.

Problem was, so did he, but he was afraid their needs didn’t completely coincide. Not in all things, anyway.

“You’re still welcome to stay in the house,” she said. “We have another room.”

“Not yours?” He was brutally frank now. He even made himself leer a bit. It wasn’t at all difficult.

He saw the sudden confusion in her face, the wound he had purposely inflicted in the coarse invitation.

“Is … that what it would take for you to stay?”

The soft voice, laced with determination, was like a blow to his stomach. She would openly become his mistress, even in front of her brother. He remembered another proposal in England months ago. Christ, he didn’t want to think another woman would consider she had to sacrifice herself in exchange for his assistance. It was too bloody damn wounding to the ego.

“No, Mrs. Fallon. It is not. I’ll stay until I’m ready to go. In that time, I’ll do what I can to help you with the Martins. You. Not your neighbors. Not Wes. I don’t give a bloody damn about any of them.” He started to turn, suddenly angry with himself and with her. Her, because of her attempt to involve him in even more lives; himself, because he wanted her so badly at the moment, he was about to agree to almost anything. Almost.

Her hand touched his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to push you into something you don’t want to do.”

“Yes, you did,” he retorted, but he smiled wryly, taking any sting out of his words.

“I’ll walk out with you.”

“Don’t think I can find my way?”

“I’m afraid you will keep going.”

“Not right away. I promised you a wooden leg.”

They were out the door now, into the night. Lights shone from the bunkhouse and the; ranch buildings, and overhead a part moon decorated a dark blue sky. A horse neighed and another answered, and there was the nightly chirping of a grasshopper. A silent figure, rifle in hand, sat like a stone sentinel on the fence that bordered the road into the ranch.

A cool breeze ruffled the few trees in the yard, and the bull, King Arthur, pawed at the ground in the corral. Despite his physical weariness from a sleepless night and the long ride today, Rhys was restless … as he always seemed to be around her. He was afraid if he stopped moving, he would grab her and hold her tight, kiss those soft inviting lips.…

Bloody Christ, he felt his manhood harden with the thought, with the closeness of her presence. Why in the hell couldn’t it have obliged last night? Why only for Susannah Fallon, of all women?

He felt her hand on his shirt. He had taken off the jacket, holding it over his shoulder. And now her touch penetrated the cloth and sent hot shocks through his body. He wanted her even more than he had yesterday. It scared the bloody hell out of him at how much.

“Thank you for coming back,” she said.

“I had no place else to go.”

“I … missed you.”

“Don’t do that, Mrs. Fallon,” he warned, although he knew he was actually warning himself. He could scarcely think, now, of a day without her, without that smile that vacillated between uncertainty and delight, that teased and invited.

“Will you ever tell me more about yourself?”

“There’s not much to tell.”

She gave him a disbelieving look. “The way you pick up dialects and accents …”

He shrugged.

“And glare at people.”

He raised one eyebrow in question.

“You practically scared that deserter out of his mind back in Virginia,” she said with a slight grin. “And even me sometimes when you’re angry.”

The other eyebrow went up, causing a frown to furrow between them. “It doesn’t seem to have bothered you.”

“Only on behalf of others,” she said. “It’s difficult to be afraid of someone who has saved your life.”

“I’ll have to try harder,” he said with the slightest of grins breaking the austere countenance. Susannah felt her heart pound faster. He looked, at the moment, almost accessible again, as he had on her hill. She leaned into him, loving the strength of his body, remembering exactly how hard it could be.

“Ah, Mrs. Fallon, you mustn’t do that.”

“Why?” she asked innocently.

His head turned down toward her. His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, but he couldn’t really see the depth of her eyes. He could just remember the passion that had shone in them two days earlier when he’d …

He shook his head to rid it of the memory. “You were asking me about my dreadful past.” The mockery was back in his voice.

“Was it dreadful?”

“Oh, quite. Much too dreadful for the ears of a lady,” he replied in his best upper-class British accent.

She put her finger to his mouth. It was so sensual, so incredibly enticing. She ran the finger along its edges, in the crevices bracketing it. “I haven’t been a lady for a long time.”

“You will always be a lady.” For once the mockery was gone, and he surprised himself as much as her with the honest sincerity in his voice.

“Even … the other afternoon?”

“Especially then.”

He wanted to grab that finger between his teeth and nibble on it. He wanted to nibble on all of her.

“Rhys …”

He turned away. “Hummmm?”

“Don’t turn away from me again.”

He gave her the raffish smile. “I thought you were afraid of sharing a room with me.”

“Not afraid of you, afraid of the way you proposed it.” She hesitated. “Cruelly,” she added.

He turned back to her then. “I have a cruel streak, Mrs. Fallon. Don’t you know that, yet?”

“I think you want me to believe that,” she replied. “I think you were trying to scare me off for my own sake.”

“I never do anything for someone else’s sake.”

“You told me you did once.”

“To my everlasting sorrow,” he said. “It taught me a lesson. I’m more careful these days.”

“You’ve done a great deal for Wes and me,” she argued.

“For my own reasons.”

“And what are those reasons?” she asked. “Oh, I know in the beginning you wanted to get out of Libby, but then … you had many chances to leave.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t have any place else to go.”

Susannah looked up at him doubtfully. “I’ll never believe that’s the full reason.”

He shrugged. “Believe what you wish.”

“Come stay in the house,” she offered again.

He touched her face, his fingers tracing patterns on her skin in light, teasing strokes. “You don’t really want that, Mrs. Fallon. And I might just have to fight your brother.”

“I don’t want you to leave here, to leave Texas.”

“I won’t. Not for a while.”

“You left me minutes ago … you traveled a thousand miles away. Back to England?”

“No,” he said honestly. He hadn’t done that, wasn’t able to do that, not when she was so close. He had only been trying, quite unsuccessfully, to back away from the chaotic feelings she was causing in him.

“Will you go back there? To England?”

“I don’t know.”

It was one of the few times she’d heard an indecisive statement from him.

“What is it like in England?”

He relaxed slightly. “Cold. A great deal of rain. Fog. England’s very green, vividly green, perhaps because of all the rain. It’s more … golden here. Like Africa.”

“Africa?”

“I spent a number of years there,” he said almost absently, not as if he were dropping a diamond of information at all, she thought. She grabbed that scrap of information for the treasure it was.

Africa. Exotic and foreign. Perhaps that explained some of the mystery about him, a certain quality that set him apart from everyone else.

“What … were you doing in Africa?” she asked, unable to keep her curiosity to herself. It was at fever pitch, as every part of her was.

Perhaps because of the night, and the attraction that so sparked between them, the sudden closeness she felt and oddly enough knew that he did too, he gave her a wry, searching look and started to speak.

“I was a mercenary, Mrs. Fallon,” he explained, emphasizing the “Mrs.” again with a maddening smile. “I accompanied settlers into the interior.” He didn’t say what else he’d done.

Susannah was fascinated, even more intrigued than before, which was considerably. Africa, she wondered again. A word in a geography book. There were so many puzzles about Rhys Redding, and this tidbit only added to them, rather than providing any solutions. His accent and speech proclaimed him well educated. He had said he was the son of a lord, although so derisively, she hadn’t known whether to take him seriously. How did a man like that become a mercenary in a faraway country like Africa? And then come to be in a Confederate prison? A wager, he’d said. But that explained very little.

“Is that why you know guns so well?” she asked. “And ride so well?”

He nodded. “In some ways, Texas reminds me of the southern part of Africa, the rolling, hills, the plains. Areas so vast, you could ride for days without seeing a human being.”

“You said you … accompanied settlers?” More, she thought greedily. Tell me more.

“I traveled with a land company seeking to settle a southern part of the country.” He shrugged. “I was guide, hunter, guard.” Gambler, opportunist. Treasure hunter.

Her hand found his, and she entwined her fingers in his. “What is Africa like?”

“That’s like asking what America is like,” he replied. “Africa is the second largest continent and has much in common with your country. Rich forests, plains like these, vast deserts.”

“And who immigrated there?”

He shrugged again. “People who always think the rainbow is just within reach but never find it, so they keep moving. The adventurers, or would-be adventurers, who buy land but don’t know how to use it.” There was a great deal of cynicism in his words. “And the idealists and missionaries. They go there to build a new society, convert the natives who don’t want to be converted, and force their customs on people whose values often surpass theirs.”

“And you? Where do you fit?”

“Ah, there you have me, love. I don’t fit anyplace.”

There was the slightest chagrin in the words, so slight she almost missed it. “Tell me about the animals,” she urged before he grew quiet again.

“Ah, now they are spectacular,” he said, a light coming into those dark eyes. “The animals are Africa’s richness. Huge herds of them. Gazelles, antelope, giraffes. Zebras. Prides of lions. And flamingos. Birds of every description and color. I do miss those.”

Susannah’s fingers tightened around his. She wished she had been there with him, to see those gazelles, antelope and flamingos. She wanted to see his eyes light and his mouth smile. She felt a greater closeness to him now than at any previous time, even that afternoon on the hill, because tonight he was sharing something of himself with her. She didn’t know why. She just knew she wanted these minutes to go on and on and on. There was an intensity in him, and she was drawn to it like a magnet. But then she was always drawn to him, to that elusive demon in him that both frightened and beckoned.

“You loved it, didn’t you?”

“Perhaps. I didn’t realize it then. I just thought of England, of returning. Now, I really don’t know why. I suppose I was like those people chasing that rainbow, only to find it dissipate as they approach it.” There was a painful honesty about him she had never seen before, a momentary glimpse into a soul he usually kept securely barred from intrusion.

He leaned against the corral post and gave her a crooked smile. “So never depend on rainbows, love. They are very unreliable.”

“But well worth looking at and enjoying,” she said.

“From a distance … if you realize a rainbow is nothing but a refraction of the sun, an illusion. Turn away for a moment and it’s gone.”

“Like you?”

“No one’s ever called me a rainbow before,” he said with a grimace.

Susannah cocked her head slightly. “No. You’re much too substantial for that.”

“Ah, Susannah. I’m not substantial at all. I’m someone you made up. An illusion, just like that rainbow.”

“You don’t feel like an illusion.”

No, he didn’t. He felt very much like a man. A very aroused man as he looked at her. Her dark hair was tied back with a ribbon, and her face was tipped upward toward him, the expression expectant and challenging. Bloody hell, what had happened to his willpower?

It certainly wasn’t around at the moment. He bent his head and she stretched up until her lips met his with mutual longing, mutual need. The two emotions floated between them, the yearning so strong that the air around them seemed to sing with it. His arms went around her, gathering her against him with a sudden turbulent possessiveness. He hurt with wanting to touch every part of her, to run his fingers along her back and watch her tense with that passion she’d so openly expressed two days ago. He felt an intense burning in his loins, a need he was beginning to think began and ended with her. Would it ever be thus? Even when he left?

The very thought brought desperation to his kiss, a wild uncontrolled thing that shook him to the core.

If only there was privacy, but there wasn’t. He … cared too much to take her inside the house, despite his earlier lewd suggestion. He didn’t particularly care about what Wes thought, but he found he did care about causing her pain. And he knew a fight with her brother would do that.

God help him if he was becoming magnanimous. He hated what she was doing to him, washing away layers and layers of protective plate so he didn’t even know who or what he was anymore.

He untangled himself gently but firmly, his eyes avoiding hers. “It’s been a very long day.”

“Will you have breakfast with us in the morning?”

“I don’t think that’s wise, love.”

“Why?”

“Do I have to explain?”

“Only if you don’t feel as I do.”

His brows furrowed together with interest. “And how is that?”

She tried to describe what was indescribable. “Hungry,” she finally said. “But not exactly for food.”

He choked, her comment spurring a very distinct hunger of his own. “You can be very … forthright, you know.”

“I know and that’s very peculiar. I used to be the model of propriety. Well, almost,” she amended.

He grinned, and the amusement reached his eyes this time. “A model of propriety? Traveling across country. Shooting people. Wearing trousers. Propriety, my love, has never seemed your long suit.”

Susannah’s heart flipped several times at the warm, intimate way he said “love.” Almost as if he meant it. But before she could explore his meaning, he stepped away.

“Good night, Mrs. Fallon,” he said, but there was no sarcasm this time, only a husky warmth that made her glow as he strode across to the bunkhouse.

He slowed as he opened the door, shuddering at the sound of regular snoring that came from within. Bloody Christ, he could be in her bed tonight.

What had he done? He hoped to hell nobility wasn’t catching. God help him if it was!

He had the depressing, sneaking suspicion it might be, and that it was a damned lonely business.

Wes looked out the window from his darkened room. He preferred it that way now. It suited his dark mood.

He watched as Rhys Redding took his sister in his arms, and the way she responded to him, the way the two silhouettes became one. He closed his eyes against the sight, trying to think it was anger that chilled him to his bones, but he knew it wasn’t. It was his own emptiness, his own envy. His own desperate loneliness.

How he had wanted to do that to Erin, to just hold her in his arms, to surrender to the softness of her. To use that sweetness to wipe away the pain and nightmares and memories.

He swallowed, and tasted the bitter aftermath of the whiskey he had been drinking. He tasted more: disgust at himself, at what he was becoming.

Redding was moving away from Susannah now, and Wes felt a momentary relief. He had not missed the attraction between the two; damn, he would have to be blind and deaf as well as crippled.

Crippled. He still had times when he forgot that. When he first woke up in the morning and felt the missing leg tingle. And then it was like learning the news all over again. Every morning of his life, he was told by his own body that he was no longer whole.

And so he had said little to Susannah. He knew they needed Redding, and it galled him as nothing before in his life. He couldn’t protect his own, and he had to hide behind an adventurer, or worse.

He turned away from the window and looked at the bottle on the table. He wanted another drink. God, how much he wanted the oblivion it temporarily gave him.

His jaw tightened. Not tonight. Maybe if he could get through tonight without another drink, perhaps he could get through tomorrow without any. He had to. For Susannah’s sake, if not his own. He couldn’t leave her alone anymore with Redding.